I took a bit of a break during my editing this morning to watch the latest Nintendo Direct. It was good! Great at times! Nintendo is about to make a lot of money.
But, from a promotional angle, Nintendo is definitely preparing for new hardware next year.
The winter lineup for 2023 going into 2024 is a set of safe bets from Nintendo. There’s a lot of Mario coming our way in the form of remakes/remasters of Mario RPG and The Thousand Year Door alike. Two new platformers in the series are on the way. WarioWare, Luigi’s Mansion…it’s a bit much, really. But the diversity in gameplay styles means that there’s something for everyone if you like Mario games, and that’s great for Nintendo. I…will not be buying some of them. I have my eyes on the RPGs (obvously) as well as both Mario Wonder and the newly unveiled Princess Peach Showtime. However, none of this captured my attention as some of the other news.
First up, Horizon Chase 2 is an absolute must-have for me. I spent dozens of hours on the first Horizon Chase Turbo, reveling in the stylish visual, tight controls, and massive series of races. A sequel is a safe bet in my book, especially since even the DLC for the first game was stellar. If you’ve not played the first, squeeze it in before the sequel drops. It’s a great throwback to 90s arcade racers.
SaGa: Emerald Beyond is a title I’ve been waiting for more information on. A brand new SaGa game is somewhat unbelievable for those of us who watched the series get snuffed out by Square-Enix in the PS2 era, and since I’ve actually played some of the games now? Absolutely. Give me all of your weird, Square-Enix. I much prefer it to your fan-bait loaded Final Fantasy VII rehashes! The trailer looks nice, but the combat UI is absurdly overwrought. I hope that gets tweaked before release. Or that it earns its keep. Whichever. I’m still in no matter what. The series is great. And weird. And hard!
And while I talk about enjoying difficult games, a trailer for a set of remastered Tomb Raider games was announced, coming from Aspyr. I’m pretty happy about this one: you can switch their ugly updated visuals back to PS1 level, and Aspyr is, in my experience, the kind of studio that hashes these ports out as quickly as possible. What does this mean?
It means that they didn’t actually change the game and it’s going to be just as jank as the originals! And that’s fantastic!
Video game history and preservation is important to me, and remaking everything to “bring it up to a modern standard” usually means that the edges and quirks that make the classics interesting get sanded away to be easier for modern players. And…accesibility is fine, but those games should still be accessible in the original format. And Aspyr will do that. Even if it means the game is kinda awkward in adaptation like their Jedi Knight remasters on the Switch. Those are direct PC ports. There is a software registration button. I have no idea how they got that through quality control!
I am using an irresponsible amount of exclamation marks tonight…chalk it up to me trying to hammer this out before bed.
The biggest surprise for me out of the entire show was the announcement of a new title from VanillaWare. If you aren’t familiar with VanillaWare, you have some amazing catching up to do. The developers of some of my favorite 2D games ever are currently working on a strategy RPG called Unicorn Overlord, a game lush with beautiful visuals. And…yeah, I’m the same person who likes to wax about how graphics don’t make a game great, but VanillaWare creates the most beautiful 2D games out there. And they’re damn fun to boot. This is a day one pick up for me. If you want to know why, go play Odin Sphere or 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim.
Beyond this…well, there’s a pair of League of Legends spinoffs that I snoozed through, a new Contra that I’m hesitant to get excited about, a lot of games that slipped off of my brain as soon as the trailer was over and I’m not going to recount despite their presence in my notes, and even some things that I need to go read up on, like Another Code!
This has been a sloppy recount of the entire event. But that’s fine. It’s late. I’m tired. I spent hours editing a story today and then even more time trying to do house related stuff while spending time with my daughter. It was a fine day, and a fine Direct. I just haven’t got any sense left.
I do want to close on a bit about F-Zero 99. First off, I haven’t played it yet, though I intend to. My comments aren’t going to be about the quality of the game that is currently out, but more so the conversation that I knew would surround the game as soon as the trailer shifted from the SNES footage to the new game. F-Zero fans have waited literal decades for a new game from Nintendo, and this definitely isn’t what any of them had in mind. I’ve seen some genuinely nasty comments about it online, including several comments comparing it to the dreadful Metroid Prime: Federation Force for 3DS. While I think that such comments are beyond extreme, I can understand being disappointed.
But, the reality is pretty simple F-Zero isn’t a known money maker for Nintendo. Neither is StarFox. Both series have been surviving on scraps for decades, and Nintendo doesn’t seem to know what to do with either of them to draw an audience that isn’t people in their thirties who enjoyed the N64 or GameCube releases. However, remakes and rehashes aren’t going to draw that audience, nor are games with experimental controls like Star Fox Zero had.
We’ve been pretty fortunate during the Switch’s lifespan to see what many people refer to as The Switch Effect – games with historically weak sales having record sales on the Switch. This is partially due to the massive install base for the Switch, as well as the fantastic games that have come out on the console, like Metroid Dread. The time for such a game is drawing to an end, as Nintendo starts their transition to new hardware over the next eighteen months (this is likely a stretch). I think that Nintendo is being careful, and testing the waters with F-Zero 99. I think that, with enough interest, the next Nintendo console will feature a new F-Zero.
But everyone needs to relax with the rage. Have a little bit of common sense.
…
What the hell am I talking about? The internet doesn’t know what common sense is.
Anyway. It was a fine Direct, and I am going to drown in Switch cartridges by the time this console is finally discontinued. Thanks for reading.
WordsThing 